Dr. Jeannine Jordan, Concert Organist

Archive for the ‘Organ concerts’ Category

Feature Article – David Jordan (Excerpted from the June 2018 Pro-Motion Music e-newsletter)

On the Train, Off the Train, On the Train, Off the Train…

We do know two things:

A. We are on the train and

B. It is moving.

The exciting news is, as humans we can stay on the train for a longer time than we thought and make it much further than we ever knew.

WHY would we want to stay on the train? We thought we knew where we wanted to go, how far we wanted to go. It should be okay to get off at a station and enjoy what’s going on around us. To stop and smell the roses. Nice idea.

What happens is that the train doesn’t stay at the station where we got off. It keeps going.

It’s important to know that if you want to get on the next train you can. Or you can take a different track in another direction. You just can’t hope for everything to stay like it is at the station where you disembarked. (that will be another article)

Well, the train stops at stations to let people off who want to or need to get off and picks up more passengers that want to go on. Hmmm

When new people get on the train, their journey might be starting where you decided to get off the train.

To them, this is a new experience and they are looking forward to a ride to somewhere, somewhere into the future.

Do you take a side rail and sit it out?

OR

Do you look at all the tracks ahead of you and choose one?

With whom are you going to ride the rails? Here’s an important idea: Get people in your car that are smarter than you are. When you surround yourself with people smarter than you, if you don’t talk too much, you can learn a lot and be propelled forward.
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Once again, David and I have been traveling and performing and once again, I’ve met creative colleagues — teachers, performers, church musicians all. Of course, we talk about our work in all its guises and share ideas, thoughts, repertoire, and pithy comments.

From my conversations with Gregory Largent in Saginaw, Michigan comes the inspiration for this article — the 7 P words. These seven little words just happen to be very apropos this month with the Jordan Organ Studio Spring Recital just a few weeks away.

Let’s take this pithy little phrase apart and see just what we performers are up against!

Proper = of the required type; suitable or appropriate.

Prior = existing or coming before in time, order, or importance.

Practice = to perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one’s proficiency.

Prevents = keep (something) from happening or arising.

Piddly = pathetically trivial; trifling.

Poor = worse than is usual, expected, or desirable; of a low or inferior standard or quality.

Performance = a person’s rendering of a dramatic role, song, or piece of music.

Enter into the practice session with a short prayer or moment of silence to center yourself.

Be mindful to review in advance what you would like to focus on or accomplish with the practice session. Warm up with the technical exercises first. Demonstrate self-denial (sacrifice) by first practicing those least pieces (or sections of a piece) that you like to avoid, save for last, or sometimes skip altogether.

In the middle of your practice, take a break from actually playing and read a Psalm, the lyrics to a favorite hymn, or a devotional reading from one of the resources mentioned earlier.

Meditate a few minutes focusing on what you have read. Resume your practice with a gracious attitude while reflecting on how incredibly awesome the organ is at expressing musically the text, theme, mood, and/or sentiments of a hymn or repertoire.

Always end a practice session on a positive note and with gratitude.

One option is to close your organ practice with a “postlude” – something you can play musically with confidence — a piece that brings you joy. This may even be a simple composition with a beautiful soundscape that is not technically complex.

The possibilities are endless for connecting contemplative spirituality or devotional meditation with organ practice are endless – allow yourself to be creative.
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by David Jordan
(First published in the May 2018 Pro-Motion Music e-newsletter)

There is an urban rumor going around that “you can be anything you want to be.” Well, it’s not true. But you can be a whole lot more of who you are and what you are. What you really are at the core of your being. And that’s significant.

You are truly A unique, differentiated, gloriously individual human being. You don’t have to look far to see what gifts your real gifts are. Deep down you know what they are. We spend too much of our lives thinking we should be someone else.

What we want to be is often a desperate effort to fulfill someone else’s opinion of what they think we should be. Don’t. At this point, you already have enough gifts to develop than you have ever imagined

The problem is, they are uniquely yours. You may feel that those gifts should be more like someone else’s. The world doesn’t need more clones. It needs your personal, individual, unique, okay, bizarre, contributions to make the wheel we call earth, move the way it was meant to move.

Personally, and you don’t have to look it up because I happen to be right. I think the progress of this earth would have been centuries ahead if we humans would have worked at being the best with the gifts given us, rather than continually adhering to someone else’s desire for us.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen used to say; “if everyone lit just one little candle what a bright world this would be.” Could that also be a metaphor for lighting the candle of talent and gifts you have been given that are unique and were created in and for you? What you think is one little candle could be a huge firework waiting to take off.